The cost of marriage and the matrimonial agency in late Victorian Britain
2013; Routledge; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/03071022.2012.759774
ISSN1470-1200
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Economic and Social Studies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 Charlotte Morland, The Matrimonial Agency (1888; 1902 edn), 7. The play was first produced at the Bijou Theatre, Bayswater, in November 1888. 2 Twenty-two different papers are listed in the British Library catalogue but others are mentioned in different sources, so the total figure is probably higher. 3 The first claim was made by R. Charlesworth, proprietor of the Matrimonial Post and Fashionable Marriage Advertiser of Bristol. See 'Matrimonial adlets', The Sun, 1 August 1893, 4. He reckoned his daily average of letters at eighty. The second is from the Surrey Daily Argus, 2 October 1906, cited on the front page of the Matrimonial Times, January 1921. 4 Matrimonial Record, 14 February 1890, 3, 7; Matrimonial Times, December 1904 (unpaginated); Matrimonial News, 14 May 1894, 1; Matrimonial Times, December 1904 (unpaginated). 5 See, for instance, Francesca Beauman, Shapely Ankle Preferr'd: A History of the Lonely Hearts Ad 1695–2010 (London, 2011). 6 The complaint that personal relations under capitalism are little more than a transaction can be found in various theorists of modernity, including Georg Simmel, 'The metropolis and mental life' in Kurt Wolff (ed.), The Sociology of Georg Simmel (New York, 1950), 409–24, especially 419. For recent accounts of the effect of economic relations and the internet on intimate life see, for instance, Anita L. Vangelisti and Daniel Perlman (eds), The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships (Cambridge, 2006); Jane Lewis, The End of Marriage: Individualism and Intimate Relations (2002); David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford, 1990), 26; The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism (London, 2010), 175; Mike Featherstone, special issue of Theory Culture, Society, xv, 3–4 (1998); Lynn Jamieson, Intimacy: Personal Relationships in Modern Societies (Cambridge, 1998); and Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy (Cambridge, 1992). 7 On the lower middle class see, for instance, Christopher P. Hosgood's three articles: '"Mercantile monasteries": shops, shop assistants, and shop life in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain', Journal of British Studies, xxxviii, 3 (July 1999), 322–52; 'Knights of the road: commercial travellers and the culture of the commercial room in late Victorian and Edwardian England', Victorian Studies, xxxvii, 4 (Summer 1994), 519– 47; and 'The "Pigmies of commerce" and the working-class community: small shopkeepers in England 1870–1914', Journal of Social History, xxii, 3 (Spring 1989), 439–60. See also David Lockwood, The Blackcoated Worker: A Study in Class Consciousness (London, 1966; rev. edn, Oxford, 1989); Geoffrey Crossick (ed.), The Lower Middle Class in Britain, 1870–1914 (London, 1977); Geoffrey Crossick and Heinz-Gerhard Haupt (eds), Shopkeepers and Master Artisans in Nineteenth-Century Europe (London, 1984); Geoffrey Crossick, 'From gentlemen to the residuum: languages of social description in Victorian Britain' in Penelope Corfield (ed.), Language, History and Class (Cambridge, 1991); Peter Bailey, Popular Culture and Performance in the Victorian City (Cambridge, 1998); Peter Bailey, 'Ally Sloper's Half Holiday: comic art in the 1880s', History Workshop Journal, xvi (Autumn 1983), 4–31; Peter Bailey, 'White collars, grey lives? The lower middle class revisited', Journal of British Studies, xxxviii, 3 (July 1999), 273–90; A. James Hammerton, 'Pooterism or partnership? Marriage and masculine identity in the lower middle class, 1870–1920', Journal of British Studies, xxxviii, 3 (July 1999), 291–321; Arlene Young, 'Virtue domesticated: Dickens and the lower middle class', Victorian Studies, xxxix, 4 (Summer 1996), 483–512; John M. Robson, Marriage or Celibacy? The Daily Telegraph on a Victorian Dilemma (Toronto, 1995); Gregory Anderson (ed.), The White Blouse Revolution: Female Office Workers since 1870 (Manchester, 1988); Christopher Hosgood, '"A brave and daring folk": shopkeepers and associational life in Victorian and Edwardian England', Journal of Social History, xxvi, 2 (Winter 1992), 285–308; Susan Pennybacker, A Vision for London, 1889–1914: Labour and Everyday Life and the LCC Experiment (London, 1995); David Cannadine, Class in Britain (New Haven, 1998), 88–103; Simon Gunn, 'Class, identity and the urban: the middle class in England, c. 1790–1950', Urban, i, 1 (2004), 29–47. 8 For eighteenth-century advertisements see Collection of Matrimonial Advertisements, British Library, undated, although probably collected in the mid-nineteenth century. Also Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution (London, 2012), 203–9; Amy-Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London, 1993). 9 Sharon Marcus, Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England (Princeton, 2007), chap. 5; Olive Anderson, 'State, civil society and separation in Victorian marriage', Past and Present, clxiii, 1 (1999), 161–201; Mary Lyndon Shanley, Feminism, Marriage and the Law in Victorian England, 1850–1895 (Princeton, 1989); Lee Holcombe, Wives and Property: Reform of the Married Women's Property Law in Nineteenth-century England (Oxford, 1983). 10 Mona Caird, untitled essay in Harry Quilter (ed.), Is Marriage a Failure? (London, 1888), 41–2; original emphasis. Caird developed her ideas in The Morality of Marriage and Other Essays on the Status and Destiny of Woman (London, 1897), which itself was influenced by Henri Letourneau, The Evolution of Marriage (London, 1895). Other endorsements of the idea include Edward Carpenter, Love's Coming of Age (London, 1896). Letourneau's book was in a series edited for Walter Scott by Havelock Ellis. On Caird see Ann Heilmann, New Woman Strategies: Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, Mona Caird (Manchester, 2004). 11 For emigration schemes see Brian L. Blakeley, 'Women and imperialism: the Colonial Office and female emigration to South Africa, 1901–1910', Albion, xiii, 2 (Summer 1981), 131–49, especially 133; A. James Hammerton, Emigrant Gentlewomen: Genteel Poverty and Female Emigration 1830–1914 (London, 1979), 67; idem., 'Feminism and female emigration, 1861–1886' in Martha Vicinus (ed.), A Widening Sphere: Changing Roles of Victorian Women (London, 1977), 52–71; and idem., 'Gender and migration' in Philippa Levine (ed.), Gender and Empire (Oxford, 2004), 156–81. For Ellen Joyce, a senior officer of the British Women's Emigration Association, in emigration 'Success usually means matrimony'; quoted in Hammerton, Emigrant Gentlewomen, op. cit., 167. The re-establishment of village society is envisaged in William Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out (London, 1891) and W. T. Stead, 'In the city of dreadful solitude: a plea for a matrimonial bureau', Review of Reviews (February 1897), 154–6. The anarchist-socialist periodical The Adult carried matrimonial ads in its short life from 1897–8. Utopian novels which feature rational-contractual courtship arrangements include William Morris, News From Nowhere (1890; 13th edn, London, 1910), chap. ix; Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (New York, 1888; reprinted London, 1986), in which the sex war has been solved by economic equality, women's employment and sexual selection; G. Read Murphy, Beyond the Ice: Being a Story of the Newly Discovered Region Round the North Pole, Edited from Dr Frank Farleigh's Diary by G. Read Murphy (London, 1894); Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (London, 1915). 12 See, for instance, the defence mounted by Y. M., Some Remarks on Matrimonial Agencies (London, 1832). Earlier puffs for matrimonial agencies include a handbill advertising the Grand Imprejudicate Nuptial Society, c. 1740, in Collection of Matrimonial Advertisements, British Library. 13 On these see Matt Rubery, The Novelty of Newspapers: Victorian Fiction After the Invention of the News (Oxford, 2009), chap. 2. 14 'A new matrimonial agency', Saturday Review, 23 August 1862, 218. The 1851 census showed 1.4 million spinsters aged between 20 and 40. Between 1851 and 1911, 25–35 per cent of all women aged 25–35 were unmarried, while 15–19 per cent of women aged 35–45 were also unmarried. On this, and its implications for marriage and courtship, see Pat Jalland, Women, Marriage and Politics 1860–1914 (Oxford, 1988), 254. 15 ibid. 16 See, for instance, 'The alleged matrimonial frauds', The Times, 3 December 1895, 12. The latter case dealing with the alleged frauds of the World's Great Marriage Association and related paper the Matrimonial Herald is explored more fully in Angus McLaren, The Trials of Masculinity: Policing Sexual Boundaries 1870–1930 (Chicago, 1997), chap. 2. 17 'On matrimony and match-making', All the Year Round (October 1882), 273–6, especially 273, 275. 18 'High priests of Hymen', Tinsley's Magazine (June 1888), 435–45, especially 436. W. T. Stead even tried to include John Calvin as a prototypical matchmaker. 'He appears to have carried in his head a list of all the marriageable young ladies of the neighbourhood, together with details of their characters, their looks, and the amount of their dowries' – Stead, 'John Calvin as matchmaker', Review of Reviews (July 1909), 54. 19 Matrimonial Herald, 13 January 1894, 3. George Orwell, 'Boys' weeklies' (1940) in Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (eds), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell (New York, 1968), 461. 20 On foreign customs see 'Jewish home life', Fraser's Magazine, 616 (April 1881), 482–501. Edward Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage, 3 vols (1891; reprinted 5th edn, London, 1925), which was the fullest working out of evolutionary anthropology at this time, recognized that 'the practice of employing one or more go-betweens for arranging a marriage is extremely widespread both among savages and among more civilized nations' – Westermarck, History, vol. i, 426. 21 Edward Salmon, 'Brides', Strand Magazine, 8 July 1894, 683–93, especially 683. Peasant societies like Italy were even worse: 'The matter-of-fact manner in which French marriages are arranged is apt to excite the virtuous indignation of high-minded people who think that love should have something to do with the matter, or at least that the principal parties to the transaction should be consulted. What would such sentimentalists say could they see the manner in which such affairs are managed in some provinces of Italy!' Anon., 'A courtship in provincial Italy', Examiner, 20 April 1878, 494–5, especially 494. 22 W. T. Stead, 'The correspondence church', Review of Reviews (October 1893), 431–3, especially 431. Stead reprinted the views of Caird. See, for instance, 'The raison d'être of the WRC by the conductor', Round-About, ix (15 February 1899), 3. 23 On this debate see Harry Quilter (ed.), Is Marriage a Failure? (London, 1888); Lucy Bland, Banishing the Beast, English Feminism and Sexual Morality 1885–1914 (London, 1995), chap. 4. 24 Marie de Bovet, 'The marriage market: French and English', New Review, vii, 38 (July 1892), 80–92, especially 87, 88. An earlier version of this story praised the discreet French matchmaker, for which see 'Modern love matches in France', The Times, 11 March 1874, 7. 25 May, Lady Jeune, 'The revolt of the daughters', Fortnightly Review, lv, 236 (February 1894), 267–76; also 'Plotting mamas', London Journal, xx, 519 (November 1893), 419; Ellen Desart, 'In defence of worldly mothers', National Review, xxix, 171 (May 1897), 382–91; 'Worldly mothers', The Speaker, 15 (May 1897), 516–17. 26 Annie Swan, Courtship and Marriage and the Gentle Art of Home-Making (London, 1893), 8. 27 Marie Corelli, Lady Jeune, Flora Annie Steel and Susan, Countess of Malmesbury, The Modern Marriage Market (London, 1898), 19–20. 28 Lady Jeune, untitled article in Corelli et al., Modern Marriage Market, op. cit., 72–4, especially 74. The articles originally appeared in the Lady's Realm of 1897. 29 E. M. S., 'Some modern ideas about marriage', Westminster Review, cxliii (January 1895), 520–34, especially 520. Other critiques on these lines included Cicely Hamilton, Marriage as Trade (London, 1909), 28. For a similar view see Mona Caird, 'The morality of marriage', Fortnightly Review, xlvii, 279 (March 1890), 310–31. 30 Anon., 'The optimism of marriage', Speaker, xii (16 November 1895), 520–1. 31 Florence Warden, The Marriage Broker (London, 1909). See also Mrs George Corbett, The Marriage Market: A Series of Confessions Compiled from the Diary of a Society Go-Between (London, 1905). Plays that used the matrimonial agency as a source of comedy included F. C. Philips and Charles Brookfield, Godpapa (London, 1891); Charlotte Morland, The Matrimonial Agency, An Original Farce, in One Act (London, 1902); Carolyn Wells and Harry Persons Taber, The Matrimonial Bureau (London, 1905); P. J. O'Reilly and Reginald Somerville, Matrimony Limited (London, 1911); the question of inheritances, money and marriage can be found in the theatre from Smetana's Bartered Bride, first produced in Britain in 1883, to Franz Lehar's The Merry Widow (1907). 32 Arthur Anderson and Adrian Ross, music by Victor Jacobi, The Marriage Market (London, 1913). For music hall songs see Harry Dacre, The Matrimonial Agent (London, 1891). Novels included Robert Halifax, The Venturesome Virgin (London, 1910), a story of a Barking builder who opens a matrimonial agency. On plays that used matrimonial agencies as dramatic devices see Anon., 'Before the footlights', Saturday Review, lxxii (31 October 1891), 500–1, which concluded: 'A curious theatrical article might be written on the number of plays, serious and otherwise, which, since that good old melodrama Le Postillion de Fougerol, have begun their intrigue in a Matrimonial Agency.' 33 Geoffrey Crossick, 'The emergence of the lower middle class in Britain: a discussion' in Crossick (ed.), The Lower Middle Class in Britain, 1870–1914 (London, 1977), 11–60. The figure for women includes those in commerce and the civil service. See G. Anderson, The White Blouse Revolution (Salford, 1988), 3. 34 Swan, Courtship and Marriage, op. cit., 80–1. 35 Between 1890 and 1899 the rate per 1000 men rose from 54.5 to 55.6, and for women from 45.8 to 46.5. See Office of National Statistics, Marriage Rates in the UK, available online at: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk = 14275; see also Guardian online, 20 March 2011, available online at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/feb/11/marriage-rates-uk-data (accessed 11 April 2012). The mean age of marriage also remained relatively stable in the 1890s, going from 25.9 in 1890 to 26.1 in 1899 for men and from 24 to 24.3 for women. See: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition = tcm%3A77-249125 (accessed 11 April 2012). 36 Eugenius, 'The decline of marriage', Westminster Review, cxxxv, 1 (January 1891), 11–38, especially 11; Clara E. Collet, 'The prospects of marriage for women', Nineteenth Century, xxxi (April 1892), 537–52. The 'declining marriage rate' was accepted as fact without qualification by the Looking Glass, 2 December 1911. For evolutionary arguments that influenced Stead and Caird, see Letourneau, op. cit. 37 T. W. H. Crosland, The Suburbans (London, 1905) 38 ibid., 71–2. 39 See, for instance, the amours (and six engagements) of Arthur Kipps in H. G. Wells, Kipps, The Story of a Simple Soul (London, 1905; reprinted 1952). 40 ibid., 145; Swan, Courtship and Marriage, op. cit., 81. For Swan see R. Q. Gray, 'Religion, culture and social class in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Edinburgh' in Crossick (ed.), Lower Middle Class, op. cit., 134–58, especially 147–8. 41 Mrs C. E. Humphry, Manners for Men (London, 1897), 21. See also, for instance, Anon., Etiquette of Courtship and Matrimony: With a Few Words of Advice to the Newly-Married Couple (London, 1905), part of Routledge's series of Household Manuals. 42 Anon., 'An East End matrimonial agency', London Journal, xxiii, 601 (June 1895), 498. 43 Mrs Alfred Marks, Orlando Figgins and Other Stories (London, 1891), 36. 44 Annie Swan, 'Should we establish a matrimonial bureau?', The Woman at Home, v (April 1897), 439–44, especially 439; William Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out (London, 1891), 233, 234. 45 Anon., 'The matrimonial agent', London Society: An Illustrated Magazine of Light and Amusing Literature for the Hours of Relaxation, xvi, 92 (August 1869), 181–8, especially 188. 46 'On matrimony and match-making', op. cit., 274. 47 Swan, Courtship and Marriage, op. cit., 33–4. 48 Swan, 'Should we establish a matrimonial bureau?', op. cit., 441. 49 Crossick, 'Emergence of the lower middle class', op. cit., 34. 50 Frank T. Bullen, Confessions of a Tradesman (London, 1907). 51 Hosgood, 'Mercantile monasteries', op. cit. 52 Swan, Marriage and Courtship, op. cit., 82. On Swan's own domestic extravagance (and love of the aristocracy), see Annie S. Swan, My Life, An Autobiography (London, 1934). 53 Crosland, Suburbans, op. cit., 40; Crossick, 'Emergence of the lower middle class', op. cit., 27. 54 See, for instance, Eliza Warren, How I Managed My House on Two Hundred a Year (London, 1864); Henry Walker, I've Only Two Hundred a Year, A Note a Propos the Frugal Marriage Question, written and composed by Henry Walker (London, 1859); The Author of 'Courtship and marriage etiquette' [Anon.], 'Whom to marry, when to marry, and how to be married', London Journal, liii, 1363 (25 March 1871), 181–2, especially 181; Anon., 'The cost of courtship', London Journal, xxiii, 599 (8 June 1895), 454. V. S. Pritchett recalled his father bringing home a book called Marriage on Two Hundred a Year, which may have been Eliza Warren's. See V. S. Pritchett, A Cab at the Door (Harmondsworth, 1974); see also Bailey, 'White collars, grey lives?', op. cit., 281. 55 Robert White, 'Wanted: a Rowton House for clerks', Nineteenth Century, xlii, 248 (October 1897), 594–601. 56 The Shop Assistant, quoted in Hosgood, 'Mercantile monasteries', op. cit., 339. 57 Jack Kahane, Memoirs of a Booklegger (London, 1939), 43. 58 White, 'Wanted', op. cit. 59 ibid., 595; H. G. Wells, Love and Mr Lewisham (1900; reprinted London, 1952), 143; Shan F. Bullock, Robert Thorne, Story of a London Clerk (London, 1907), 161. 60 Crosland, Suburbans, op. cit., 74. 61 G. S. Layard, 'Family budgets', Cornhill Magazine, x, 59 (May 1901), 656–66, especially 657. 62 Matrimonial News and Special Advertiser, 18 May 1894, 1. 63 Figures compiled from Matrimonial Herald and Fashionable Marriage Gazette, 13 January 1894; Matrimonial Post and Fashionable Marriage Advertiser, 24 March 1894; and Matrimonial News and Special Advertiser, 19 May 1894. 64 For instance, in his account of the World's Great Marriage Association fraud trial Angus McLaren takes the crown's side against the Skates brothers and their Matrimonial Herald in his Trials of Masculinity, op. cit., chap. 2. 65 The most authoritative statistics come from the famous and decidedly upmarket Heather Jenner Marriage Bureau, established in 1938, and which catered for a mainly middle-class client with £500 a year. Sixty per cent of their women clients were aged between 25 and 40, while 70 per cent of men were in the same age range, mostly between 30 and 35. 'Report to the Executive Committee of the NMGC from its Committee of Inquiry into Marriage Agencies, March 1949' in National Marriage Guidance Council: Report on Matrimonial Agencies, 1948–9, National Archives (hereafter NA), Kew, HO 45/25203, 3–5. 66 See 'Matrimonial adlets', The Sun, 31 July 1893, 4. 67 These were the fees of the World's Great Marriage Association. See 'The alleged matrimonial frauds' (London), The Times, 3 December 1895, 12; 'Police', The Times, 1 January 1896, 14. On this case see also The Times, 3, 18 and 24 December 1895, 12; also 8 and 29 January, 29 February, 2 March 1896. On this case see McLaren, Trials of Masculinity, op. cit., chap. 2. The principals were sentenced to between three and five years' penal servitude for fraud, although a more sympathetic reading of the case would be that they were punished for the unreasonable assumptions of their clients, who expected to be married to rich widows at the drop of a hat. 68 See 'The alleged matrimonial frauds', op. cit., 12; 'Police', The Times, 1 January 1896, 14. 69 Matrimonial Herald, 13 January 1894, masthead, 1, 3. 70 Matrimonial Post, 24 March 1894, 6. 71 'Matrimonial adlets', The Sun, 27 July 1893. 72 ibid., The Sun, 4 August 1893, 4; 28 July 1893, 4; Round-About, 15 July 1898, 7. 73 See, for instance, Murphy, Beyond the Ice, op. cit. 74 Maud Churton Braby, Modern Marriage and How to Bear It (London, 1908). For Stead's schemes see W. T. Stead, 'The wasted wealth of King Demos', Review of Reviews (March 1893), 331–8, especially 334; 'Should we establish a matrimonial bureau?', Woman At Home (April 1897), 439–44, especially 441–2; W. T. Stead, 'In the city of dreadful solitude', op. cit., 154–6; also his journal the Round-About (1898–1903). See also J. W. Emsley, Social Questions and National Problems, Their Evils and Remedies (Bradford, 1901). One business venture of 1904 was the Matrimonial Club which aimed 'to carry on business as club proprietors, hotel proprietors, entertainers, organizers of balls, soirees, conversaziones, boating excursions, cricket and other sports, clubs theatrical and musical entertainments', Board of Trade NA, BT 31/10722/81263. 75 Womanhood (September 1900), quoted in Round-About, iii, 4 (September 1900), 3–4, especially 3. 76 'Advertisement and matrimony', T. P.'s Weekly, 24 November 1911, 670. 77 Anon., How to Woo: or, the Etiquette of Courtship and Marriage (London, 1876), 9, 13–14. 78 On radical rethinking of marriage as freely dissoluble and subject to no-fault divorce see, for instance, Dora Russell, Hypatia, or Woman and Knowledge (London, 1925); Catherine Gasquoine Hartley, Motherhood and the Relationship of the Sexes (London, 1917); Clement Wood, Why I Believe in Trial Marriage (Girard, Kan., 1929); and Ben B. Lindsay, The Companionate Marriage (London, 1928).
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